“Madame Dornaye is my burnt-offering to that terrible sort of fetich called the County. She’s what might be technically termed my chaperon.” “Oh, to be sure,” he said; “I had forgotten. Of course, you’d have a chaperon.” “By no means of course,” she corrected him. “Until the other day I’d never thought of such a thing. But it’s all along o’ the man named Burrell. He insisted that I mustn’t live alone—that I was too young. He has such violent hallucinations about people’s ages. He said the County would be horrified. I must have an old woman, a sound, reliable old woman, to live with me. I begged and implored him to come and try it, but he protested with tears in his eyes that he wasn’t an old woman. So I sent for Madame Dornaye, who is, every inch of her. She’s the widow of a man who used to be a professor at the Sorbonne, or something. I’ve known her for at least a hundred years. She’s connected in some roundabout way with the family of my father’s stepmother. She’s like a little dry brown leaf; and she plays Chopin comme pas un; and she lends me a false air of respectability, I suppose. She calls me Jeanne ma fille, if you can believe it, as if my name weren’t common Johannah. If you chance to please her, she’ll very likely call you Jean mon fils. But see how things turn out. The man named Burrell also insisted that I must put on mourning, as a symbol of my grief for the late Sir William. That I positively refused to think of. So the County’s horrified, all the same—which proves the futility of concessions.” “Oh?” questioned Will. “What does the County do?” “It comes and calls on me, and walks round me, and stares, with a funny little deprecating smile, as it I were some outlandish and not very proper animal, cast up by the sea. To begin with, there’s the vicar, with all his wives and daughters. Their emotions are complicated by the fact that I am a Papist. Then there’s old Lord Belgard; and there’s Mrs. Breckenbridge, with her marriageable sons; and there’s the Bishop of Salchester, with his Bishopess, Dean, and Chapter. The dear good people make up parties in the afternoon, to come and have a look at me; and they sip my tea with an air of guilt, as if it smacked of profligacy; and they suppress demure little knowing glances among themselves. And then at last they go away, shaking their heads, and talking me over in awe-struck voices.” “I can see them, I can hear them,” Will laughed. “Haven’t you in English a somewhat homely proverbial expression about the fat and the fire?” asked Johannah. “About the fat getting into the fire? Yes,” said Will.